By Julie Kelly
Friday, October 27, 2017
Caving to pressure from environmental activists, the
European Parliament voted on October 24 to ban glyphosate, the weed killer
commonly sold under the brand name Roundup, by the end of 2022. A subsequent
vote to renew glyphosate’s EU license, which expires at the end of this year,
failed, and growers in 28 countries are now faced with the real possibility
that this safe herbicide used by farmers around the world will be permanently
outlawed. The move will have consequences here as activists trumpet the EU
glyphosate ban as a reason to enact the same prohibition in the U.S.
Greenpeace EU, the group leading the crusade against
glyphosate, cheered the news: “Although the phase out periods are longer than
technically needed, the Parliament’s proposal is a breath of fresh air. More
than one million Europeans and now the Parliament are calling for a ban on this
dangerous chemical.” Against the wishes of his country’s farming interests,
French president Emmanuel Macron fought hard to win support for the ban.
Hundreds of French farmers blocked the Champs-Elysées last month in protest.
“It’s a real pity that members of Parliament allow themselves to be influenced
by anti-glyphosate activists who claim to represent public opinion, but only
represent hostility toward industry, and more worryingly, hostility toward
science,” Graeme Taylor, a spokesman for the European Crop Protection
Association, told me. “It ignores the clear and unequivocal opinion of the EU’s
own agencies on the safety of glyphosate.” The ban would have a crippling
effect on the EU’s agricultural sector and the international grain trade.
It is also a major blow to Monsanto, the maker of
Roundup, and a huge victory in the decades-long war against that corporation by
the misanthropic environmental Left. The anti-glyphosate crusade is a proxy
battle against genetically engineered crops, too, because Monsanto has
engineered many such crops, especially corn and soybeans, to be “Roundup-Ready”
— i.e., to survive the application of Roundup so they don’t die along with the
weeds. Since the introduction of genetically engineered crops more than 20
years ago, yields of these grains have soared while pesticide use has
decreased. Study
after study
confirms that glyphosate poses a minimal risk to the environment or human
health.
But activists and their lapdogs in the European Parliament
are choosing to ignore the large body of evidence supporting glyphosate’s
safety and instead rely on an outlier report from the International Agency for
Research on Cancer. In March 2015, IARC, which is under the purview of the
World Health Organization, issued a report concluding that glyphosate is a
probable human carcinogen based on “limited evidence of carcinogenicity in
humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” as well as “convincing evidence that
glyphosate also can cause cancer in laboratory animals.” The finding was
swiftly rebuked by government agencies and agricultural interests around the
world; the scientists who produced the report have been criticized for
misrepresenting data, editing drafts to delete contrary evidence, and using the
report as propaganda to promote their own anti-glyphosate agenda. Nonetheless,
it has been a gift to activists and lawyers seeking to profit off of glyphosate
“victims.”
One of these is Christopher Portier, the scientist who
initially encouraged IARC to conduct the glyphosate analysis and served as a
special advisor to the committee that drafted the final IARC report. In a
deposition last month for a court case pending against Monsanto for glyphosate
“damages,” Portier admitted he was retained by a law firm representing glyphosate
victims less than two weeks after the IARC report was published. Since then,
Portier has been a hired gun, giving expert testimony on behalf of
cancer-stricken farm workers and their family members who believe glyphosate
caused the disease.
It has been a profitable gig. Over the past two years,
Portier has banked about $160,000 for his time and has another $30,000 in
billable hours now outstanding. (He is earning $450 per hour for his
“expertise,” so take that, NRO writers.) During that time, as he pressured EU
and U.S. agencies not to publish favorable findings about glyphosate, Portier
failed to disclose his conflict of interest; in fact, Portier insisted “nobody
has paid me a cent to do what I am doing with glyphosate.”
Portier also had close ties with high-ranking officials
in Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, which delayed its own final
assessment on whether glyphosate is carcinogenic, although two internal reports
concluded it is not. Congress is investigating possible connections between
Portier and the EPA on how the IARC report was handled; in an October 25, 2016,
letter to then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, House Science Committee
chairman Lamar Smith accused her of making “misleading and untruthful statements”
about EPA’s involvement and interactions with Portier: “Moreover, the
increasing amount of evidence depicting the close ties between EPA officials,
Christopher Portier, and the IARC study of glyphosate show that there were
activists working both inside and outside the agency.” He might have hoodwinked
his pals at the EPA, too. In his deposition, Portier admitted communicating
with several EPA officials over “concerns about glyphosate” yet not disclosing
to them his new gig as a paid consultant on glyphosate-related lawsuits.
Portier has a history of such obfuscations. In a May 5,
2016, email to me objecting to an NRO article I wrote about his involvement in
the IARC report, he told me this: “I am no activist. I realize that you will
probably not change a word of your article, but felt the need to correct you
simply because I believe that by characterizing a scientific debate as
activists with an agenda, you are doing a diservice [sic] to your readers.” At
that time, he had been getting paid by law firms representing alleged
glyphosate victims for more than a year.
Europe’s glyphosate ban is yet another example of
weak-kneed politicians’ capitulating to bad science, shady scientists,
malevolent environmental activists, and greedy lawyers, and it could have grave
consequences. While this cabal cheers its victory over Monsanto, European
farmers fear for their livelihood.
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